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On Saturday June 28th from 1:00pm to 4:00pm, HiTel FCU employees will be volunteering with Helping Hands Hawaii and KITV in promoting School Tools 2014. Our staff will be encouraging shoppers to donate school supplies or monetary gifts for purchasing the necessary materials. School Tools is a statewide program that provides less fortunate students from kindergarten through high school with the tools to help them succeed in the classroom. The program seeks donations such as: backpacks, pencils/pens, crayons, color markers, colored pencils, spiral notebooks, composition notebooks, wide ruled and college ruled paper. You may also donate to any of our branch locations. Mahalo!

August marks the beginning of the new school year for all of our bright young students in Hawaii. This means shiny new laptops, new school supplies…but for most of us, back to school means back to traffic, and here in Hawaii we have that special kind of “this freeway feels like a parking lot” traffic. And let’s be honest, in our small island, it’s almost IMPOSSIBLE to avoid the morning rush. So what is our advice? If you can’t beat it, cruise it! Here are 5 ways HiTel FCU Employees deal with traffic:

1. Start the night BEFORE. Prepare for work the night before to make getting ready easier the next morning. Prep your outfit, pack your lunch, make a list of reminders, pack your car with things you need, and head to bed as early as possible to get a good night’s rest. Now that you’ve prepared the night before, when you wake-up you will be free to do what you please, whether it’s hitting the snooze button or doing some morning stretches.

2. Listen to classical music. You may have read in our post about improving your memory that one way to keep your brain stimulated is to listen to classical music every day. Getting lost in the sounds of the gentle violin and thunderous bass may be the right antidote to fighting that restless feeling you get when you drive in traffic. American Public Media (APM) broadcasts a segment called Performance Today which plays classical pieces from around the world. Songza, a mobile app and website, plays playlists that were created to fit a certain mood or activity, in our case, the morning commute. Choose from five categories of music that will help make your morning commute more enjoyable…may we suggest some Pre-work Meditation?

3. Go with the flow. Some drivers suffer from a serious case of “lane envy”, the feeling we get when we look to other lanes and see cars moving at a faster pace than us. Dr. Bryan Dawson and Dr. Troy Riggs wrote a study on Highway Relativity and found that because we only observe what’s out our window, we tend to think changing into the “faster” looking lane will decrease our driving time. The reality is, all lanes tend to average out to be moving at approximately the same speed.
What’s the moral of this tip? Stressing out about getting in to another lane isn’t worth it and will not help you reach your destination more quickly. So, turn up that classical music, shift down to second gear and just go with the flow.

4. Carpool. Carpools are a great way to GO GREEN and an even better excuse to use the Zipper and Express lanes. These lanes are almost always free of traffic. Another perk? How about sleeping through traffic while you let someone else drive? It’s also a fun way to get to know your co-workers or spend quality time with your family, after all an hour every day to and from work, you’ll learn so much about each other!

5. Learn something new. Audio books aren’t just for your grandparents. Audible.com powered by Amazon offers audio books for your iPod or mp3 player (just use a device like this or this to connect the iPod to your car stereo). They have everything from The Help and the Hunger Games to Classics like Shakespeare titles and Atlas Shrugged. You can listen to books to learn and improve yourself like developing career skills and find ways to motivate and inspire yourself.